The Ultimate Parents Guide to the ROBLOX Game

The ROBLOX game was introduced to our kids a few years ago when our nephew, at the time 6-years-old discovered it. Like all good cousins, when they find something cool on the internet they share. After constant badgering from our kids, we downloaded the Roblox game out and agreed they could play it – but that we would setup their ROBLOX login, account preferences and settings as to what they could do and access.

Internet Safety Tip: Keep a list of your kid’s logins. It’s a rule on our home – anything that requires a login – we need to know what it is.

How popular is ROBLOX? Players spend over 20 million hours playing games and building in their own personal virtual worlds. Roblox is ranked #1 in the US for total engagement time within the 8-14 year old segment, and is rapidly growing in popularity amongst players aged 15+.

Our 2 older kids, now 10 and 8 years old have been playing ROBLOX for the last few years. While Minecraft was their favorite – and still would be – we’ve restricted access to that – which is a blog post for another time.

With all of the popularity with this game, I thought the best way to start this series is a good all about ROBLOX post. As a digital mom of tech kids, I want to know exactly what they are doing online – while I still can. Here is information on what exactly this game is. Soon we will be talking about if ROBLOX is safe for kids, also the explosion of popularity with this game. Let’s learn more about what exactly this game is before diving any further.

What is ROBLOX

ROBLOX is a massively multiplayer online game – or an MMO. The game is created and marketing towards children and teenagers. Each player creates their own virtual world in which other online members can enter, play an socialize.

ROBLOX can be be scripted using a sandbox edition of Lua 5.1. With scripts you can change the events that happen in the game and create different scenarios and situations. This game has can encourage children to learn computer programming, currency (read more below about currency and money) as well as using their creativity to create their online world.

ROBLOX is more than game play and socialization. My kids love the building, creating and learning aspect.

Is ROBLOX Educational?

I love how the company describes education within this game:

We believe in the theory that kids learn best by making things; by engaging in the creative and complex process of imagining, designing, and constructing. Provide them with a safe place to build, give them the requisite tools, and let them play. Were particularly inspired by the educational theory pioneered by Seymour Papert of the MIT Media Lab. This theory  labeled Constructionism  holds not only that kids learn best when they are in the active roles of designer and builder, but that their learning is optimized when theyre assuming these roles in a public forum. This makes good sense to us  particularly after observing some of our members who know that the fruits of their labor may be seen, critiqued, and used by others. These are motivated kids who become deeply engaged with building complex structures and solving difficult problems. Their level of creativity, the amount of time and care spent building, and the extent and high quality of their discourse never fails to astonish us.

Is Roblox Free?

ROBLOX is free, but there is a “Builder’s Club” which is one of the ways they make money. There also is lots of advertising and by the popularity of the game, I am sure they make a pretty penny off of that as well.

ROBLOX has since introduced Robux – which is the game currency.

ROBLOX Currency

ROBLOX tickets and ROBUX are the currency used in the game. They can be converted from one to the other. According to my 10-year-old: You get 10 tickets a day everyday that you login. ROBUX are more valuable and you have to click money to trade currency. Previously, points were used but have been replaced.

ROBLOX tickets are earned everyday you login – 10 tickets a day. You can earn tickets by people playing your game or selling virtual assets.

Is ROBLOX Safe?

Just like ALL things in regards to your kids online – you MUST be an active part of whatever they are doing, including playing ROBLOX. There are inappropriate things that happen on this game – the game does try to make an effort to make this a safe place for kids to play, but with as many players as this game has, it’s obviously not that easy.

Read more about our thoughts on this game and online safety here -> Is Roblox Safe

The best thing to keep you children safe online is to teach them what is right and what is wrong. Also, report any activity that you see that is inappropriate for children.

We let our kids play, but it is semi-supervised experience. We check in often, remind them what is okay and what is not. There is no total safe space for our kids on the internet.

Devices

You can access ROBLOX on PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Amazon Devices, and Xbox One. ROBLOX adventures are accessible from any device, so players can imagine with their friends regardless of where they are.

Socializing

Players play each other, add people they meet to their friends list. From the friends list, a player can select 20 friends to be their best friends – or BFOR (best friends on Roblox – okay, I made the BFOR up – but my tween would totally love that.) There is a news feed where the players can see profile statuses. There are community groups.

Chatting – Players over the age of 13 can free chat and type whatever they want. While ROBLOX is testing a safe chat where younger uses can select from words to chat.

ROBLOX Games

Here are a few things you need to know about ROBLOX games – from the suggestions of other parents:

Front Page Games Only:

Keep your child away from any Builders Club Only games, and the “Group Recruiting Plaza” to be safe. The front page games tend to be the most monitored, allow your child to just play those games.

Can You Block Certain Games?

Unfortunately, you cannot block certain games from your child. This is a popular request. Blocking games is something many parents hope to see the company implement to allow parents greater control over what games their children play.

Refund on Games

If you spend Robux on a game and it gets taken down, chances are you will not get a refund on the game.

Parent Notifications on Games

Parents want to be involved with their children when they play online games. Unfortunately, at the current time there is not a way to be notified to know what games your children are playing. An ideal situation would have a parent control panel that gave reporting of what each child was playing and how long. Currently there is no way for a parent to be notified of what games their child is playing.

ROBLOX Studio

Players build and construct their worlds using building bricks and blocks in ROBLOX studio. These blocks vary is size, shape and color using ROBLOX studio. Using the programming language Lua – a player can dynamically change the environment of the game.

The Roblox Studio was built to be your all-inclusive Place editing program. Using the Studio you can script, build and test your Places all before you show off your Place to the rest of the community. If you want to make any kind of changes to your Places, then you should use the Studio to make those changes. –

This ROBLOX video is a great way to learn how to get building in ROBLOX studio.

What questions do you have about Roblox? Ask below- we want to make this the ultimate parent’s guide to Roblox!

My grandson loves to play this game on my home computer. I’m not sure if his parents allow it in their home. But–what happens at Grandma’s stays at Grandma’s. From what I have observed, he likes to play to watch the disasters and how to “save” himself. He is not old enough to chat with anyone. He just enjoys it.
Can Roblox be detrimental or dangerous to him?

Only if he chooses to “seek” out stuff that can. On ROBLOX now days you have to look for in appropriate material, eh here is a bad example say ROBLOX is like life (not by comparison) the bad stuff is like “drugs”, as long as you don’t go looking for the “drugs” he should be fine.

IDK if this thread is still active but this info was helpful. I will keep researching but my 13 yr old grandson is obsessed with this game and I want all the time that he spends on it to be constructive and not the major waste of time it appears to be from my perspective. I do ask him about it but I sense (like most teens) that he is only partially sharing. Can we further discuss the dangers and down side, so ignorant parents can be proactive?

Tickets, or Tix are no longer obtainable. Now the only way to get Robux is to have a place in which you can purchase a gear that costs Robux, or pay for Robux or Builders Club. The former is rather hard to achieve, and depending on how much you are willing to pay, Robux can be expensive.

Might want to be very careful. Its more a game for teens than anything. Has some disgusting people on it. People can get audio clips and I’ve heard some pornographic ones. Moderators dont care. There are sex games too. Also the music they play is censored but extremely suggestive. Some of it talks about sex acts and doing drugs.

Everyone shut up I’m 10 I have seen sex in game and I don’t care I would say that you should teach your kids internet safety though. These games which you think have “gore” don’t Its just a roblox character breaking apart there are no red effects.

My son likes Roblox and there are some games in there I don’t mind him playing. Other games, however, he doesn’t always listen and plays anyway. Instead of just removing the app altogether, is there a way I can block the games I don’t want him to play?

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